[quote=joec]When I used to auto-x, sometimes we’d share a car or a “better” driver would drive my car and you can get a sense of how much more time you can get from your vehicle…Again, tires make a world of difference and a lot of times, you can even tell when you car’s tires are losing grip. You notice it just pushes or you have to wait a lot more when the tires are old/hard/etc…before you can turn or recover.

If this other driver has suspension and tires, that’s really all you need as I mentioned in my earlier post. Car power is not that important on the auto-x vs. say a track or something. Like you don’t see Nissan GTRs do that well since the car is big/heavy.

This is why you see people go through the massive hassle of trailering tires on all manner of cars even the Miata to these events.

If I win lotto, I will be autocrossing again. 😉 Maybe with a flatbed and a truck![/quote]

My friend was an instructor that day and drove it one practice lap with me as a passenger, and vice versa. There was another guy who runs a miata performance shop that was also an instructor. My friend was about 2 secs quicker in a practice lap, and he wasn’t pushing it too hard, so it’s about 4 secs of wiggle room for me.

My tires are Dunlop Direzza ZII’s, are as good as they are going to get for 14″ without moving into 15″ which I don’t think will help me that much at this point.. There’s no other decent street tires in 14″. Both instructors that drove my car also mentioned the suspension setup was fine and neutral… The brakes are a little touchy since it’s more brakes than the car needs, but manageable… Mostly driver skill issues at this point….